Join the chorus! By reporting your weekly sales, you celebrate independent bookstores and prove that our sales channel is strong. Make your voice heard, bring attention to regional authors, stay relevant in the halls of publishers and the minds of authors, and create indie bookstore buzz in-store, in print, and online — for all these reasons, we need all members to report their sales. Each of these lists is also a great sales tool. Print them out and post them in your store.
Indie Bestseller List and Heartland Indie Bestseller List
Gathered every week by the ABA, the Indie Bestseller list aggregates sales figures for ABA’s member bookstores throughout the country. A print-ready version of this list is available on ABA’s IndieBound page to post in your store.
Those figures are further divided into regional lists. For the Greater Midwest, that’s the Heartland Indie Bestseller List. We release the Heartland list via email to 1,500 members throughout the industry every Wednesday afternoon or Thursday morning, and also post it on our main Bestseller List page.
Bookseller Karin Kimble of Valley Bookseller in Stillwater, MN, says the following.
”We have a section in the store where the top 15 fiction and nonfiction, hardcover, and trade paper titles from the Heartland Indie Bestseller List are featured as Notable books. In the trade paper section, both fiction and nonfiction especially, this generates terrific sales for us. Customers see that display as they enter the front door. It’s almost a daily task to refill those shelves. The Heartland list reflects the interests of our customers better than the New York Times or West Coast lists.”
Reporting is both easy and confidential. Just follow the steps below.
- Choose one of the three ways to report: the ABA manual entry, the ABA file upload, or to BookScan via your POS. You can review the reporting options here. The vast majority of stores choose the BookScan reporting method because: 1) It’s nearly automatic and drawn directly from your POS, and 2) you also contribute to BookScan’s important sales data, which drives publishing decisions. The BookScan compatible POS systems include Anthology, Basil, Book Manager, Books-In-Store, BookLog, Computac, IBID/IBIDie, Square One/iMerchant, Word Stock, and UBIC. However, as long as the system is capable of creating the report in the necessary format, BookScan can also use indepedent and other point of sale systems. Contact Rachel Ehrentreu at Rachel.Ehrentreu@nielsen.com directly for instructions and to receive the appropriate software bridge.
- If reporting via the ABA manual entry or file upload methods, create a login and password for the ABA reporting area on BookWeb.org. If your store doesn’t have a BookWeb.org account, you can create one here. (You will need an ABA ID number to create the account, so if you’re not yet an ABA member, please join ABA.)
- Your report should include sales that week beginning 12:01 am Sunday through midnight Saturday.
- If reporting via BookScan, transmit the weekly report no later than 10 pm each Monday.
- If reporting via one of the ABA methods, transmit the weekly report no later than 3 am EST each Tuesday via the ABA reporting site. The reporting site opens each week at midnight Saturday.
For questions, visit the ABA Indie Bestseller FAQ page. For technical support, contact Peter Reynolds at peter@bookweb.org.
The New York Times Bestseller List
The New York Times Bestseller List, released every Sunday in the paper’s Book Review, reflects sales reported by vendors offering a wide range of general interest titles. The sales venues for print books include independent book retailers; national, regional and local chains; online and multimedia entertainment retailers; supermarkets, university, gift and discount department stores; and newsstands.
It’s increasingly important for independent booksellers to make their voices heard on a national level. Please, demonstrate the importance of the indie sales channel by reporting your sales to this important national outlet for book news.
To report your sales to the New York Times, call Chris Harcum at (212) 556-5889 or email nytbestsellers@nytimes.com.
- Every Tuesday, you’ll receive an email letting you know what titles are in the Book Review that weekend, giving you advance notice to order these titles for your loyal readers.
- You’ll also receive the Times Digest with the pdf containing the Best Sellers Lists a week and a half before it hits the printed edition.
- You’ll also receive a complimentary copy of the printed Book Review sent directly to your store.
For more detailed information, visit the Best Sellers List reporting site.
